Amul plans to invest Rs 2,500 crore in Uttar Pradesh

Neha Lalchandani | TNN

LUCKNOW — Amul is likely to invest Rs 2,500 crore in Uttar Pradesh over the next few years. Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation managing director Dr RS Sodhi on Monday said that in the next 10 years, the state’s organized milk production should be 300 million litres, against the current 110 million litres.

Speaking at ‘UP-US Services e-Summit; Handholding of UP and US: A win-win Paradigm’, organized by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, North India Council, Sodhi highlighted the role of the organized milk sector in creating jobs. “Amul is planning to invest Rs 2,500 crore in UP. The organized milk sector can create 6 lakh jobs in the coming years if production capacity can be increased from 2 million litres to 10 million litres per day and productivity can be increased through better breeding facilities,” Sodhi said.

Bhuvnesh Kumar, principal secretary (dairy development), said that UP was already working on a breed improvement programme. “The UP government is open and ready to invite investments in semen production and animal shelter homes,” he said.

Addressing the session on agro economy, additional chief secretary (horticulture) Manoj Singh said that the government would soon be issuing a new agro food processing policy under which land requirement for agro food parks would be reduced from 50 acres to 20 acres. Singh said that by 2022, the drip and sprinkle irrigation facility would be available in each village in the state.

Alok Tandon, Infrastructure and Industrial Development Commissioner, said that there were four growth engines that could spur UP’s economic growth. These were agricultural and food processing, tourism and culture, infrastructure, and MSMEs. He said that the government was working to improve existing policies and making them more suitable for investors, especially in light of the changed world economy due to Covid-19.

MSME minister Sidharth Nath Singh spoke about the government’s one district-one product scheme, and how the state was setting up a skill development university for supporting entrepreneurship. “The state has managed to ground 50% of the MoUs signed by it, a feat for any government. We have assigned a separate desk for every country we are trying to convince to invest in UP, which is monitored by senior level officers,” he said.